(2004) Injustice, Violence and Social Struggle. the Critical Potential of Axel Honneth's Theory of...

Jean-Philippe Deranty

Injustice,Violence and Social Struggle.The CriticalPotential of Axel Honneths Theory of Recognition

ABSTRACT

Honneths fundamental claim that the normativity ofsocial orders can be found nowhere but in the veryexperience of those who suffer injustice leads, I argue,to a radical theory and critique of society, with the poten-tial to provide an innovative theory of social movementsand a valid alternative to political liberalism.

KEYWORDS: Honneth, Marx, Recognition, Critique, SocialStruggle, Critical Theory, Violence

This paper aims to explore the critical con-tent of Axel Honneths ethics of recognition,that is to say, the original potential for socialand political critique that it entails. Theseimportant dimensions of Honneths work areoften ignored. The specific critical core ofHonneths model derives from his decidedaction-theoretic and normative stances. Com-bined, they produce the axioms that under-pin the model: that social reproduction isembedded in normative principles which artic-ulate the necessary conditions for individualself-realisation, and that social agents cansomehow appeal, if only negatively, to theseprinciples.

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Part I provides a brief reconstruction of Honneths paradigm. I follow thelogic that led Honneth to first accept the shift proposed by Habermas towardsa communicative paradigm, then critique its linguistic reduction, and in itsstead offer an anthropologically inspired, more substantial, model of social-isation that famously delineates the three spheres of recognition. My mainconcern in this part is to highlight how the shift from older types of CriticalTheory, to communication, and finally to recognition is driven by the con-cern already mentioned: to conduct social theory on the very level of theimmanent normativity of social action and interaction. This concern leads tothe fundamental notion of the moral dimension of social reproduction and,as a negative consequence, the moral dimension of social struggles.

Part II then explores the implications of this position for social and politicalcritique. I show how the action-theoretic, normative approach enables Honnethto make the experience of injustice the driving epistemic guideline of theoryitself. No other contemporary social theory gives as much theoretical rele-vance to the experience of social domination. In fact, I argue that Honnethquite self-consciously places his proposal within a sub-current of CriticalTheory, which, against more illustrious systemic styles of analysis, has char-acterised itself as the theoretical spokesperson for the tradition of the oppressed(Benjamin). Against all expectations, Honneth can thus be portrayed as anheir of the Marx of the historical writings, the early Lukcs, but also of WalterBenjamin or Franz Fanon. The critical edge in Honneths model becomes allthe sharper if, in line with these writers, the consequence is drawn from thenormative logic of recognition struggles that violence, the irreducible practi-cal dimension of struggle, is to some extent morally justified.

Part III identifies some of the ways in which this critical edge was subse-quently blunted. Although his model seems to lead naturally to a theory ofsocial movements, and to substantial critiques of modern institutions, fore-most of late capitalism, Honneth has left this part of his theory underdevel-oped. Even more puzzling has been his tendency, in later texts, to recast thetheory of recognition within the framework of political liberalism. In its incep-tion, the theory of recognition provided a powerful innovative way to dowithout this framework. Equally, the acritical theory of modernity that under-pins Honneths model is mentioned.

298 Jean-Philippe Deranty

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These final remarks, however, could only arise out of the very strength of themodel. Despite being critical, they confirm and extend the powerful criticalpotential contained in Axel Honneths social philosophy.

I. Honneths Theory of Recognition

Honneths position is the result of a critical reception of Habermas.1 The mostfundamental assumption borrowed from Habermas is that the progress inrationality has seen the replacement of a model based on the subject-objectaxis with an intersubjective, communicative one. Honneths work is a defenceand illustration of the intersubjective tradition applied to social and moralphilosophy. He has systematically devoted studies to the most importantphilosophical proponents of the intersubjectivity paradigm.2 Conversely, muchof his critical work in social philosophy consists in highlighting the mistakesthat arise when the intersubjective dimension is neglected.

The adoption of the paradigm shift towards communicative action leads toa Meadian, symbolic-interactionist account of subject-formation, as in Habermas:The subject owes its constitution to its relationship with other subjects; auton-omy can only be realised in intersubjective dependency.3 A subjective centreof action, speech and self-reflection emerges as the retroactive product ofprocesses of internalisation of external constraints and perspectives, accessedthrough symbolic means, and which constrain a rebellious source of spon-taneity. This means that autonomy is fundamentally decentred.4 Equally, thesocial bond is best explained neither individualistically, nor holistically orsystemically, but as reciprocal interaction, as communication.

Honneth identifies and makes his the early Habermasian idea that socialreproduction is not best explained through instrumental action, or in termsof social labour as in Marx, but through the logic of communication.5 Whatholds society together, what enables the fragile articulation of competing yetinterconnected subjective interests and expectations, is not functional inte-gration through praxis, or the different subsystems that have arisen in moder-nity, but an understanding that is reached between agents about the sharedassumptions that always must inform action-coordination. This understand-ing is made transcendentally possible by underlying normative constraints.

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The point where Honneth departs from Habermas and that signals the movetowards the recognition paradigm is that, for Honneth, the underlying nor-mativity making social understanding possible is not best explained in prag-matic-linguistic terms.6 On the conceptual level, universal pragmatics leaveout of consideration other equally important dimensions of normativity thatconstrain social action just as much as linguistic-pragmatic rules: social agentsagree on action-guiding norms not just if these norms respect their status asequal partners in communication, but also if their affective, physical well-being and their cultural and social identities are not compromised by them.The linguistic turn belies the refoundation of social theory in a materialisticphilosophical anthropology that takes into consideration the, partly pre- orextradiscursive, subject-constitutive dimensions of bodily and social experi-ence.7 On the critical level, the linguistic turn leads to precisely the kind offunctional analysis of social domination and resistance that was supposed tohave been circumvented by the focus on communication. This is because thelogic of communicative rationalisation produces a reified distinction betweenmaterial and social reproduction.8 This in turn creates the fictions of a power-free realm of communicative action and of a norm-free realm of systemic regulation which make an action-theoretic analysis of social struggle, or more specifically an analysis of the contemporary forms of alienated labour,impossible.9

By accepting the shift to communication, but rejecting its linguistic interpre-tation, the paradigm of recognition defines an action-theoretic perspective onsocial interaction and subjectivity: the philosophical-anthropological dimen-sions of individualisation through socialisation gives substance to the inter-subjective hypothesis, but also, and just as importantly, to the normativedimensions of identity, social interaction and social evolution. In this model,the subject depends on relations of recognition for its formation; the self is aform of self-relating informed by the interaction with others. Three basicstructures of self-relationship can be identified as fundamental conditions of subjective identity: an intimate self-relationship which grants the self thephysical and affective self-assurance necessary to face the natural and socialworlds; a self-relationship in which the subject sees itself as equally worthof respect, as a morally responsible subject; finally, a more substantive self-relationship which grants the subject the self-confidence that is necessary toclaim its place in the social community as a valid contributor.10


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These formal structures also provide the key to the normative framework ofthe social. Social evolution has consisted in the gradual demarcation of thesedifferent spheres of identity, both in terms of real separate identity featuresand in terms of a differentiation of types of rights. Social action is constrainedby the normative demands implicitly expressed in these features: when oneof these fundamental features is compromised by cultural or institutionalarrangements, particular individual and social pathologies emerge; individ-ual and group discontent arise as a consequence and can potentially lead topractical attempts to redress these particular injustices.

The full paradigm is precisely one of a struggle for recognition, because ofthe logic of recognition. Recognition enables agents (individuals and groups)to both assert their identity and discover new features of their identity; thesenew features, however, since unrecognised, necessitate a new struggle forrecognition, and so on.11 The most defining aspect of Honneths model is itsconstant, decisive rejection of all functionalist or systemic models of expla-nation in social theory.12 By that, Honneth understands any model that explainssocial integration in terms of the structural imperatives and constraints ofsocial systems (markets, administration, legal system). Against them, Honnethwants to defend an exclusively action-theoretic perspective, one that referssocial explanation back to the perspective of the agents actions, that explainssocial structures as constituted through intersubjective interactions, not asthe product of supra-individual necessities. In Marx, Adorno, Horkheimer,Marcuse, Habermas, Foucault, Honneth identifies always the same paradox:despite their avowed goals, these theories of society deprive themselves ofthe very resources that are necessary for critique by succumbing to the temp-tation of systemic analysis.

A critical theory of society that is coherent and faithful to the seminal definitionsgiven by the two former directors of the Frankfurt Institute,13 starts from theassumption that social reality contains prescientific forms of praxis from whichtheory and critique arise. That is to say, the normativity to which critiqueexplicitly or implicitly refers is in the end to be found in the social itself. Asa consequence (critical) theory should presuppose that social agents can somehow refer to those criteria, notably when they engage in struggles againstdomination. This double assumption forms the content of the concept ofinnerworldly or immanent transcendence,14 which is at the heart of Critical


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Theory. If critical theory defines itself in relation to forms of social discon-tent driven by an interest in emancipation, then it is forced to take both anaction-theoretic and a normative stance. As soon as subjects are consideredas mere material moulded passively by systemic processes of social and/ormaterial reproduction, as soon as social action is understood as a quasi-auto-matic response to systemic demands, the gap that opens up between socialreality and critical analysis becomes unbridgeable. The simple possibility ofsocial struggles, which it is the task of critical theory to explain and justify,becomes conceptually unfathomable.

This emphasis on agency explains the moral nature of social normativity.The demands for recognition and the claims of injustice, which drive bothindividual formation and social evolution, are specifically moral because theyrelate to the conditions of identity and autonomy.15 Far from being a moveaway from critique and emancipatory politics, the insistence on the moraldimension of social struggles places the focus, both theoretical and practical,on the normative meaningfulness of experiences of injustice, and the capac-ity for resistance of the dominated. For Honneth, it is the best approach toempower individuals and movements socially and politically. The many crit-ics of the recognition paradigm who interpret Honneths model as indicat-ing a shift from class struggle and distributive justice to concerns aboutidentity and culture have simply not paid enough attention to what he actu-ally writes.16 No content of social claim is a priori excluded from demands ofrecognition. Honneths point is simply that, even in the case of material inter-est, individuals engage in struggles because they want to recover basic socialconditions that are essential to them as human beings.

II.The Experience of Injustice: Critical Radicality

The centrality of the moral in Honneth plays a certain part in the rejectionof his model by writers of Marxian and Nietzschean credence. However,Honneth insists on this term primarily for critical reasons. In this section, Iwant to highlight the radicality that is implicit in the notion of a moral dimen-sion of social struggles.


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Methodological Radicality

The exclusive focus on an action-theoretic approach gives Honneths socialphilosophy its distinctive originality. But the way in which Honneth devel-ops this action-theoretic emphasis is just as important.

Action-theoretic approaches to the social have to solve the problem of theaccess to subjective meaning, the problem of interpretation. Honneth couldnot hark back to a Weberian type of approach with its decidedly individu-alistic focus. But neither could he use a phenomenological approach as theone developed by Alfred Schulz. Instead of an interpretive approach, Honnethuses a dialectical one, a methodological negativism inspired by MichaelTheunissen. It is based on the idea that truth cannot be accessed directly butonly indirectly.17

Applied to social theory, methodological negativism states that we can gaina preliminary entry into the normative order of society only negatively.Honneth does not describe the normative conditions of individual autonomyand self-realisation in directly positive terms, nor does he attempt to devisehermeneutic tools to question the normative meaning of action in the con-sciousness of the actors themselves. The first step towards the normativeframework is taken by reading it as the reverse image that emerges by con-trast, when individual and social pathologies indicate in the negative whatthat order should contain. The normative order appears as the absent or dam-aged structures to which suffering social subjects appeal in their protest againstsocial injuries, or even more primarily in their intimate experiences of socialdomination.

Honneths model arises from the history of social struggles and a phenom-enology of social suffering. Of special importance in the construction of hismodel are the seminal historical studies by E.P. Thompson and BarringtonMoore, and the sociology of social domination, with the works of PierreBourdieu and Richard Sennett as central references.18 This first negative stepdoes not make the further theoretical elaboration redundant, the one that proposes developmental and historical accounts of the intersubjective con-stitution of personal identity in its three fundamental dimensions. This theo-retical construct, by stressing the essential intersubjective vulnerability ofsocial subjects, gives a retrospective theoretical confirmation of the real


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experiences of social suffering. There is therefore a dialectical relationshipbetween the field of experience, which gives access to the theoretical realm,and the field of theory which gives substance to the primordial access grantedby the initial phenomenological and sociological approach. This dialecticalrelationship between experience and theory works both at the general levelof theory construction and at the empirical level of analysis of a particular society.

The main reason why Honneth chooses such a negativistic path is not somuch methodological, a question of conceptual or epistemological sophisti-cation, as it is critical. Honneth is so convinced that Critical Theory canachieve its goal only if it takes seriously the imperative of grounding its claimswithin the immanence of social action, that he makes the experience of socialsuffering, the consciousness of injustice (Barrington Moore), not just theobject of theory, but more fundamentally its epistemic guideline.19

Like no other social theory, Honneths paradigm of recognition relies on theassumption that theory is dependent, not simply on a level of moral concern,but on the very level of theoretical construction, down to its very language,on the experience it takes as its object. This is true firstly for the choice of theterm recognition itself, which is simply extracted from the discourses of realsocial struggles and made into a theoretical category.20 The social theoristlearns about the normative structure of society from the historical experi-ences of struggle, and when struggle is not even possible because domina-tion is too powerful, from the experiences of suffering. In this model, consistentsocial theory does not interpret social reality from outside or from above.Critical Theory is inconsistent when it relies on the assumption, or leads tothe result, that the victims of injustice do not themselves know, somehow,about the normativity that makes their situation unbearable and that renders critique necessary, the very normativity that sustains their feelingsof dispossession, their eventual resistance, and possibly their revolts. CriticalTheory must find in the very experiences of the dominated, even in theirexpressive silences, the resources and the language to articulate the norma-tive framework of society to which they implicitly already referred them-selves. The critical theorist speaks for the dominated: for them, not, as insystemic theories, in their place, but on their behalf. The self-reflective criti-cal theorist is a mediating spokesperson.21


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The approach is methodologically original in a more specific sense. If the nor-mative must be read off negatively from experiences of socially inflicted suf-fering, no such experience can be a priori discarded. Even, and especially, thatkind of social suffering is normatively, and therefore, epistemically, significant,that cannot find clear and adequate expression, either because the force ofdomination is strong enough to bar it from the public arena, or because itaffects subjects so deeply that only psychosomatic pathologies give a nega-tive sign of its noxious effects.

The Theoretical Counterpart of The Tradition of the Oppressed

This focus on the experience of the oppressed pursues a long tradition of crit-ical thinking, one that has been constantly repressed by the more grandioseattempts to analyse modern society in systemic terms. Yet this strand hasalways been kept alive, precisely because it holds fast to the simple notionthat a theory of social emancipation cannot consistently disregard the veryindividuals it purports to speak for. This sub-current brings together the mostdiverse authors who, despite their important divergences, share the concernthat inspires Honneths methodological negativism. The tradition of theoppressed, the wretched of the earth have not just moral primacy: theydefine a perspective that has foremost epistemic and methodological primacy.The truth of the social is not to be found in the consciousness of those whodominate, but in the experience of the dominated.

This idea finds a most famous illustration in Marx himself, with the opposi-tion between ideology and proletarian consciousness. The proletariat and thecapitalist suffer the same type of alienation, but because their experiences ofalienation and of social reality are radically opposed, their epistemic posi-tions themselves are also incommensurable. The bourgeois who profits fromthe alienating tendencies of his world is for that very reason unable to seeits structural contradictions. The bourgeois is the first to be fooled by his ownideology. By contrast, those who actually experience social domination arepotentially granted a point of view which enables them to see through theideological veils.

Of course, a common thread between Marx and Honneth can be claimed onlyif it is characterised in the most formal terms. Honneth has repeatedly criti-cised the Marxist paradigm.22 He often points to Marxs productivist model


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of action, his instrumentalist conception of rationality, the metaphysical con-ception of history, and the two deleterious consequences resulting from thesepremises: the restriction of emancipatory potential to the proletariat, and afunctionalist reductionism in the analysis of modern society. Honneths ownmodel can be described precisely as the attempt to keep alive the drivingintuition of Marxs thought: the normative and epistemic paradigmaticity ofexperiences of injustice, without the theoretical and critical liabilities thatcome with the problematic premises just mentioned.23

Next to the functionalism of the mature economic analyses, Honneth findsanother strand in Marx, which he embraces. In the early writings, the expres-sivist conception of labour retained action-theoretic and intersubjectivisticflavours that led to the acknowledgement of the moral dimension of alien-ation. This early focus on the moral dimension of social suffering disappearsin the economic writings of the maturity, but reappears in a different shapein the historical studies. For instance, in his historical report on the classstruggles in France, Marxs interest is widened and includes, beyond the mereutilitarian interests of the classes in conflict, their class-specific values andexpectations, in other words the whole area of class-specific culture and experience.

This focus on class-specific forms of experience and their respective moraland epistemic worth is a fundamental aspect in Honneth.24 Following theMarx of historical class struggles, but also Bourdieu, Honneth explicitlyopposes the discourses and cultural modes of expression of dominating anddominated individuals and groups. The capacity of dominating groups toarticulate moral and legal norms in universal, logically consistent languageproduces the illusion of a representation of the existing social order from aneutral, interest-free, epistemically and morally relevant, perspective. Butthere is a great suspicion that the capacity to articulate specific moral normsfrom an apparently neutral perspective is at least as much the result of neces-sity as it is the product of specific abilities: it is precisely because ruling classeshave to justify their social domination that they are made to produce uni-versalistic forms of morality. As Honneth says, they are under a social con-straint of justification.25 However consistent moral justification is, it remainsa form of justification, a justification of social domination. Moreover, the rul-


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ing classes also rule over the symbolic universe and thus exercise a mono-poly over the very means that enable any group or individual to present theirexperiences in legitimate terms. These two socially determined structures,the lack of justificatory pressure and the inaccessibility of symbolic meansenabling a socially acceptable representation of specific experiences combine,with other social and political mechanisms, to bar dominated classes fromparticipating in the public sphere, from having their voices heard and acknowl-edged as relevant. The normative characterisation of moral discourse de factocreates forms of cultural hegemony. Conversely, however, these two struc-tures and the cultural exclusion that results from it are precisely the sourcesof the moral and epistemic superiority of the individuals and groups suffer-ing from social exclusion: beneath the justificatory discourse of the existingorder, their invisible, unheard attempt at expressing suffering and discontentpoint to the reality of the existing order, and, negatively, to the normativeideal that could drive change. Therefore, as Honneth concludes, it is in therepressed experiences of social suffering that historical progress finds its realresource.

Honneths constant interest in class-specific forms of experience and their rel-evance for critical theory are a retrieval and transformation of the Marxistintuition that precisely those who suffer from injustice have a privileged posi-tion, in epistemic terms, but of course also in an emancipatory perspective.The fundamental difference is that, with the abandonment of the exclusivefocus on the revolutionary character of the proletariat, all forms of social suf-fering and experiences of injustice become a priori relevant.

This proximity between the central inspiration of Marxism and Honnethstheory of recognition is confirmed by Honneths strong engagement with theMarxist scholar who best thematised the epistemic superiority of the domi-nated, Georg Lukcs. Famously, the third part of History and Class Consciousnessis devoted precisely to the analysis of the truth content of the proletarianstandpoint. Of course, there is, as with Marx, no straight continuity betweenLukcs and Honneth. In Lukcs, Honneth sees precisely the fateful influenceof a theory of emancipation driven by a philosophy of history which led thefirst generation of Critical Theory into an impasse. However, Honneths studyof the early Lukcs shows how much he wants to retain the spirit of Lukcs


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early romantic anti-capitalism.26 In it, Honneth finds a precursor to his ideathat justice and freedom imply individual self-realisation through successfulsocialisation. Interestingly for Honneth, Lukcs provides such a focus fromwithin the Marxist tradition, where the utilitarianism of the orthodox inter-pretation usually precludes it. Lukcs socialromantic reading of Marx isprecisely the reason why he is able to develop a social-theoretical view thatis sensitive to social suffering and individual pain, a theory in which socialsuffering can appear as suffering.27

In his important reconstruction of the theoretical projects that founded theFrankfurt Institute for Social Research, Honneth applies his recurrent critiqueof functionalist reductionism to the authors that formed the inner core ofthe Institute, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse.28 In opposition to them,Honneth sees another precursor in Walter and Benjamin. Against Adornosblindness to class-specific experiences and cultural achievements and his blan-ket rejection of modern forms of cultural expression, Honneth approvinglyfinds in Benjamin a writer for whom the conflict between classes was a con-tinually lived experience, as well as a theoretical premise of every culturaland social analysis. Benjamin was able to see that it is the cultural strug-gle of social classes itself that determines the integrative ability of society.29

As a consequence, Benjamin was able to view cultural phenomena not justas the effects of a totalitarian process of reification, but as empowering andexpressive elements, as the cultural dimension of social struggle.

As always with Honneth, one should read in the words dedicated to anotherauthor an indirect description of his own theses. This is confirmed by anotherstudy, where Honneth interprets Benjamins messianic conception of historyas a theory of recognition.30 Benjamin sees justice in the duty, repeated foreach generation, of giving the tradition of the oppressed its right, by wrench-ing it from the interpretation imposed by the winners. This, Honneth claims,amounts to elevating the invisible subjects of domination to the status of inte-gral partners in communication, that is to say to recognising them at last,beyond a past invisibility that history, as the historical self-assertion of thewinners, had fatefully entrenched.

Other authors in the tradition of social critique could be mentioned, whichhave been commented upon in positive terms by Honneth, and share with


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him the methodological decision to paradigmatically focus on social suffer-ing as the relevant epistemic perspective in social theory: Georges Sorel,31

Jean-Paul Sartre,32 or Franz Fanon.33

The Moral Justification of Violence

The moral dimension of social struggles does not lead to a weakening of thecritical potential of Critical Theory. On the contrary, it implies that primacybe given to the experience of social suffering at the methodological and evenepistemic level. Few social theories have dared make this move, even withinthe critical tradition. This goes even further if we now focus on the agonis-tic dimension of recognition. If social struggles are more than just the battlesbetween divergent strategic interests, or the symptoms of systemic failures,if in fact they are waged on the basis of unmet demands for recognitionwhich, because they try to defend, vindicate or redress the very identity andautonomy of endangered subjects, are fundamentally moral, then strugglesthemselves have a moral dimension, that is to say they are themselves nor-matively significant. This new aspect is also easily overlooked and its radi-cality ignored. Honneths social philosophy provides not just an explanation,a descriptive framework, but more importantly a normative justification ofsocial struggles. The normativity of social struggles has two dimensions. First,struggle is normatively justified as the engine of evolution, both at the levelof the species and for individuals. Social movements have been responsiblefor the emergence and entrenchment of differentiated types of rights, frompolitical, to social, to cultural rights. The previous comparison with Marxreceives a new confirmation: with the abandonment of the proletariat as theclass of emancipation, Honneth rewrites Marxs famous thesis that history isthe history of class struggles. Modern history is the history of social struggles.

The critical potential of this justification of social struggle becomes all themore obvious, and in fact all the more radical, if the focus shifts from theteleological normative justification of social struggles as factors of evolution,to their dynamic aspects, the conditions of their emergence, the logic of theirdevelopment and their own internal structure.

According to the theory of recognition, subjects engage in struggles for recog-nition when features of their identity that are essential for their full autonomyhave not been recognised: since an identity feature can only be established


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intersubjectively, the lack of recognition leads directly to the damage or nega-tion of the feature itself. The consequence of this claim and its critical radi-cality are inevitable and rarely noticed: if subjects and groups build theiridentity and achieve their autonomy only through struggles for recognition,this means that there is a moral justification of violence. After all violence iswhat every struggle analytically entails.

Violence in this context covers the widest range of individual and collec-tive phenomena, from the most passive and individualised forms of resis-tance, to the most destructive types of action, including the whole spectrumof more or less institutionalised and/or institutionally recognised forms ofclaim, appeal and resistance. The use of violence as a general notion is war-ranted, however, because the notion of a struggle for recognition indicatesprecisely that something that is normatively owed the subjects could not beacquired by them from within the existing order. Recognition entails thebreaking of the existing order because that order fails subjects or groups infundamental ways.

It is not sufficient to reduce the active side of struggles for recognition toacceptable, institutionally legitimate forms of resistance and claims. Thismisses the point about the necessarily antagonistic aspect of recognition. Assoon as a claim is institutionalised, it has by definition passed successfullythe threshold of recognition. On the contrary, struggles for recognition areprecisely struggles that aim to institutionalise claims that were not yet seenas legitimate. In this sense they are violent, as doing violence to, as notrespecting, as attempting to disrupt and change, an existing order of reality.

The retrospective historical gaze can be misleading. In the case of the his-torical examples of the acquisition of political and social rights, it has takengenerations, an infinite mass of courage, sacrifice and suffering, to imposepersonal rights, citizenship rights, and later on, social rights. If today a strug-gle for recognition appeals to those rights, it does not mean that it is no longerviolent because it appeals to already institutionalised rights: if it is an authen-tic struggle for recognition, its specific violence consists in the fact that someindividuals or groups that so far appeared as not legitimately protected bythose rights now claim precisely that the opposite is the case, that they do


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fall under their jurisdiction. In the Australian context, the granting of citi-zenship rights to Aboriginals in 1967, or the recognition of their previousownership of the land are typical examples of the vindicating of old rightsfor as yet unrecognised bearers of those rights. If violence is taken in thisgeneral sense of a disruption of the existing order, then it is accurate to saythat for Honneth, as for Marx and Engels, mutatis mutandis, violence is theinstrument thanks to which the social movement vanquishes.

The examples so far point to acceptable forms of violence, a violence that isnot really violent, a violence that disrupts only institutional realities. But thelogic of struggle for recognition does not a priori exclude forms of violencedirected against property or even against persons.

In Unsichtbarkeit, Honneth attempts an analysis of the moral epistemology ofrecognition by taking as its point of departure the book by Ralph Ellison,Invisible Man. He refers to the passage in the prologue where the narratortells how he has always tried to defend himself against his own invisibilityby beating around with his own fists.34 Honneth interprets the crude descrip-tion of physical violence in the following way: what in the text is describedas a beating around with ones own fists must be taken in a metaphoricalsense and must in all probability designate all those practical attempts withwhich a subject attempts to draw attention to himself.35 Honneth clearlymetaphorises, or at least euphemises, the text and his own theory when hetransforms beating around into practical attempts. This becomes obviousif we ask what sort of praxis is meant here. It is the praxis of a subject thatprovokes a reaction in others simply in order to be acknowledged by them.As the book makes clear, provocation here indicates the whole array of exis-tence-ascertaining attitudes, including the very physical provocation of beat-ing someone up, or even threatening to slit their throat, to violently forcethem to finally see you.

Already in Struggle for Recognition, Honneth had encountered the phenome-non of personal aggression as part of the developmental logic of recognition,with a discussion of the passage in the 1805 Jena lectures where Hegel discusses crime as originating in the law itself. In this text, Hegel shows thatan abstract legal recognition also entails misrecognition of other essential fea-tures of the individuals, such that the law itself, because of its abstraction, is


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responsible for crime. Here again, the text of reference is graphic: I commitcrime, acts of violence, robbery, theft, insult, etc.36

The vague phrase of a moral justification of violence obviously needs to befurther detailed. Justification operates firstly as diagnostic and explanation:crime is not only the sign of failures in socialisation, of individual psycho-logical disorders, it can be the symptom of unmet demands for recognition,of pathological tendencies originating in the social order itself. The claims ofrecognition might therefore be justified even when the means used to expressor fulfill them are not. The theory of recognition shows that social violencecan have its origin in a violence done to society.

Further than that, no recognition can be achieved without struggle, which inturn necessarily implies some violence done, at least to the cultural frame-work, the laws, or some institutional arrangements of a given society. Howdoes the theory of recognition decide between the normative necessity ofsome violence and the recognition of other peoples rights, including therights of those who deny recognition? Are there cases where, say, damage toprivate property would be justified as a means towards a justified end ofrecognition? This does not seem a priori impossible to accept. Hegelsjustification of the right of necessity is a justification of violence done to thelaw and private property in the name of a higher principle.37 Are there caseswhere attacks against individuals, insult, robbery, or even crime couldbe justified as justified means for a justified end of recognition? Howeveruncomfortable this question, it is one that the theory of recognition cannotavoid asking itself. The tradition in which Honneths work is located has his-torically always answered in the clearest way: yes, in the case of the gravestdenials of recognition, extreme physical violence, including murder wasjustified. Beside Marx and Engels, one can think of the Benjamin of theCritique of Violence and other later texts, or the first chapter of Fanons,The Wretched of the Earth.

III. The Critical Edge Blunted

Against systemic reductionisms, the theory of recognition empowers indi-viduals and groups fighting against all forms of domination since it showshow the normative resources that are necessary for critique and the practi-


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cal attempts at emancipation are to be found nowhere but in the very expe-rience of those who suffer from, and more or less implicitly reject, the exist-ing order. Despite this promising renewal of critical theory, however, Honnethfails to answer crucial questions which arise directly from his model. In thisthird section, a series of immanent critical points is made: they arise from thedisappointment that occurs when the promises that seem to be contained inHonneths initial proposal are left unfulfilled.

An Unacknowledged Logic of Social Movements

As the sub-title of Struggle for Recognition attests, Honneth explicitly presentshis theory as a theory of social conflicts. However, if he does provide aseductive account of the moral dimension behind social suffering and therebyan account of the moral dimension that triggers and fuels social movements,he offers no further distinction and analysis of the specific dynamic, prac-tical and normative logics driving them. Chapter Nine of Struggle forRecognition, which claims that the theory of recognition is relevant for socio-logical approaches to conflict remains desperately short of important con-ceptual distinctions. In particular, it does not address, nor does any later text,the crucial problem of the justification of recognition claims, and the dis-tinction, highlighted above, between justified claims, justified ends and justifiedmeans. Honneth has only ventured so far as to show how the three spheresof recognition can lead to conflicting demands that require case-sensitivedeliberations in individual, moral situations,38 but this doesnt address thedilemma of justified claims using illegitimate means.

The different dynamic and normative dimensions of social movements havebeen well identified and substantially developed in the work of EmmanuelRenault.39 In his latest book, in particular, Renault convincingly proves thatthe account provided by Honneth of the moral dimension of social suffer-ing and social conflicts creates the conditions of possibility for a theoreticalmodel of the different dimensions of the emergence and development of socialmovements. What are the conditions that are structurally necessary for indi-vidual experiences of social suffering to be harnessed so that they can giverise to collective action? What subjective and collective processes are at playwhen violations of the intimate sphere lead to organised resistance and action?In other words, how does social suffering become politically relevant? It is


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the role of the philosopher, and not just of the empirical sociologist, to makethese conceptual distinctions and study these processes, since the develop-mental logic of social movements is supported by a normativity that is con-ceptually justified and reconstructed.

An Undeveloped Critical Analysis of Institutions

This lack of further development is especially obvious if we consider the hori-zon that the theory of recognition opens for alternative critical analyses ofsystemic phenomena, those social, economic, and political institutions thatseem best explained as the results of endogenous systemic logics. The the-ory of recognition seems to be particularly weak when compared with thesweeping descriptions and critiques that systemic theories of modern insti-tutions are able to make. In fact, however, Renault proves that the theory ofrecognition is able, not just to give a theory of social movements, but grantsalso a coherent and innovative perspective on such institutional, systemicrealities as the legal sphere, the labour and the commodity markets.40

As Renault remarks, it is striking that Honneths interpretation of recogni-tion leaves out of consideration the important interaction between subjectsand institutions. One of the most important lessons of Hegels theory ofSittlichkeit is precisely that individual autonomy depends on institutional real-ities for its concrete realisation. Despite his rereading of the Philosophy of Rightas a critical diagnostic of modern social pathologies,41 Honneth has neverwidened the scope of intersubjectivity to include institutional recognition.This probably explains why he has failed so far to develop a more substan-tial critique of modern institutions as an obvious consequence of his ownmodel.

If institutional arrangements, as the results of compromises between groupsin conflict, are embedded in normative frameworks, then the theory of recog-nition provides a key, not just for the diagnostic of existing pathologies, noris it just restricted to explaining the different struggles for recognition thaterupt as a result of asymmetrical distributions of power, more profoundly,the theory of recognition might also provide a key to the analysis of the func-tioning of institutions itself. Of course, this access to institutional realitiesthrough the contested normative assumptions implied in them does not pro-


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vide an exhaustive interpretive view. There is no denying the partially auto-nomous development of subsystems. But the normative, recognitive dimen-sion is a fundamental part of those institutional realities and it is just asmistaken to leave out of consideration their normative embeddedness.

To give just one example, the developments in contemporary capitalism canbe explained, to an important extent, through the antagonistic interplaybetween those classes that own the different modes of value-accumulationand constantly attempt to widen their scope, with those who produce valueand suffer directly from changes in the nature of labour. Capitalistic economiescould not function if there was not a basic acceptance of some of its funda-mental normative assumptions, but, conversely, the factual framework thatresults from this asymmetrical compromise between social forces, containsnumerous conflictual points which need constant justification and renegoti-ation.42 Too many theories of contemporary capitalism forget that the neo-liberal push towards the abolition of the welfare-State and the globalisationof exchanges have been the result of a concerted, organised effort on the partof business groups, backed by an army of ideologues, and put into practiceby convinced or interested politicians. There is nothing fateful about them.These efforts have been and continue to be opposed, just as much as theyneed constant justification.

An Alternative Political Theory Repressed

In no dimension is the blunting of the potentially radical nature of Honnethstheory more obvious than in its political aspect. The fundamental thesis,inspired by Hegel, that self-determination is only abstract if it is accountedfor separate from the conditions of self-realisation leads to an importantinsight, that, again, is quite innovative in the contemporary landscape, namelythat the theory of justice cannot separate strictly the just from the good. Ofcourse, the good cannot be included in a substantial sense. What is requiredis a formal ethics, a description in formal terms of those social structuresthat are always necessary for the self-realisation of subjects. The last chapterin Struggle for Recognition explicitly presented the theory of recognition as analternative to both liberalism and communitarianism, avoiding the abstrac-tion and individualism of the former, and the normative overburdening ofthe latter.


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The following words, written about the early Lukcs, are a good summaryof Honneths early critical view of liberal definitions of justice: an ineradi-cable connection between individual self-realisation and community forma-tion makes it possible to extend the idea of progress beyond the conceptof social justice and universal freedom.43 Linked with the intuition drivingthe action-theoretic focus and the methodological negativism, this rejectionof political liberalism was highly innovative and far-reaching. The direct con-sequence is that liberal theories of justice must face the same kind of suspicionas did moral justification: the appeal to highly formal principles of socialjustice and general freedom, however consistent these might sound, does notprovide a conceptual language that can account for social injustice. It fails onits own terms. An adequate theory of justice can only develop negatively, asthe negative set of principles appealed to in real experiences of injustice. Thenormativity within the consciousness of injustice, which is articulated andharnessed in social struggles, is therefore not just moral or social, it also hasconcrete political relevance, in that it normatively questions the principles ofa community, and, when organised collectively, projects an alternative modelof a just society.

In Struggle for Recognition, Honneth was very close to acknowledging thisaspect of his theory. He writes in the penultimate chapter: In the light ofnorms of the sort constituted by the principle of moral responsibility or thevalues of society, personal experiences of disrespect can be interpreted andrepresented as something that can potentially affect other subjects.44 The dis-covery by the subject that his experience has a social character, is in fact sym-bolic of a group-experience, is the motivational basis for a collective actionthat relies on this shared experience. Therefore, the initial intimate experi-ence of injustice harbours the potential that is required for real political action.More profoundly, the negativistic methodology leads to the conclusion thatthere is no access to justice principles except negatively, from the immanenceof experiences of injustice in which the abstraction of liberal principles comesto light, and new rights and/or new applications of existing rights aredemanded. But Honneth never visited the avenue that his own theory hadopened up. Instead, in his last writings, he has been anxious to recast thetheory of recognition within classical political liberalism,45 thus renouncingthe original political stance provided by his early Hegelianism, his strongaction-theoretic approach and his methodological negativism.


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Acritical Theory of Modernity

There is a tension in Honneths writings, between the darkness of the socio-logical diagnostics drawing on contemporary sociological research,46 and theconceptual reconstructions which offer an idealised version of modernity.Many critics of Honneth probably think mainly of the second type of textsand do not realise that they are only the counterpart to highly critical accountsof modernity in its empirical reality.

All critical-theoretical models draw their ultimate inspiration from a funda-mental vision of modernity. It is striking that, despite his expert sociologicalcritique of contemporary pathologies, Honneth continues to maintain theHabermasian trust in a general tendency towards moral progress, a visionof Enlightenment as an unfinished project, where Enlightenment now standsfor autonomy through full self-realisation. Honneth never discusses the worstmoral failures of modernity, totalitarianism and colonialism. Does the gen-eral model of recognition become obsolete if the thesis of a general moralprogress and social evolution is problematised, or even dropped?47 Doesthe normativity of recognition collapse if it is no longer supported by a teleo-logical, idealised account of modernity?48 More specifically, does the recog-nitive value of law become obsolete if the history of modern rights isproblematised and the ambiguous role played by law in the worst evils ofmodernity is also taken into account?

* Jean-Philippe Deranty, Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, North

Ryde, 2109, Sydney NSW, Australia.

Notes

1 Although Habermas seems to think that the recognition paradigm does not rep-

resent a shift from his own. See J. Habermas, The Inclusion Of The Other. Studies in

Political Theory, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, p. 208.2 Hegel of course, but also Rousseau, Fichte, the young Marx, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty,

Heidegger, Gadamer, Lvinas, Taylor, Habermas evidently. Husserl is one major

figure that seems to be missing from this list.3 Habermas famously adopts Meads pragmatic, interactionist theory of social action

in the second volume of his Theory Of Communicative Action, but Honneth was

also instrumental, with Hans Joas, in the rediscovery of Mead in German social


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theory. See H. Joas, G.H. Mead. A Contemporary Re-examination Of His Thought,

Cambridge, Polity Press, 1985.4 This is developed in chapters 4 and 5 of Honneths Struggle For Recognition. The

Moral Grammar Of Social Conflicts, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995. A concise sum-

mary is provided in A. Honneth, Decentered Autonomy: The Subject After The

Fall, in The Fragmented World Of The Social. Essays In Social And Political Philosophy,

ed. C. Wright, New York, State University of New York Press, 1995, pp. 266-267.

Along with Hans Joas, Honneth was instrumental in the rediscovery of Mead. See

their Social Action And Human Nature, trans. R. Meyer, Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 1988, pp. 59-70.5 More precisely, he identifies two paths in Habermas and chooses the repressed,

fully communicative one over the path later taken by Habermas that consists in

a synthesis of action-theoretic and systemic approaches. See A. Honneth, The

Critique Of Power. Reflective Stages In A Critical Theory Of Society, Cambridge MA,

MIT Press, 1991, chapters 8 and 9, especially pp. 268-277.6 Besides the critical study of Habermas in the last three chapters of The Critique Of

Power, the two central texts, dating from the early 1990s, where Honneth signals

his departure from the pragmatic-linguistic interpretation of communication to-

wards a more fully-fledged, anthropological one are: Die soziale Dynamik von

Miachtung. Zur Ortbestimmung einer kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie, in Das

Andere Der Gerechtigkeit. Aufstze zur praktischen Philosophie, Frankfurt am Main,

Suhrkamp, 2000, pp. 88-109; Moral Consciousness And Class Domination.

Some Problems In The Analysis Of Hidden Morality, in The Fragmented World,

pp. 205-209.7 As Honneths early work with Joas suggests, the methodological function of philo-

sophical anthropology seems to be central in Honneths model. He seems to want

to replace the communicative action grounded in universal pragmatics with an

anthropologically grounded theory of intersubjectivity. This avoids the idealisa-

tion of social interaction that he perceives in Habermas, with its corollary deficit

in critical potential. This is confirmed by the latest text published by Honneth in

which the epistemology of social recognition is unlocked through recourse to dev-

elopmental psychology with strong anthropological undertones. See A. Honneth,

Unsichtbarkeit. Stationen Einer Theorie der Intersubjektivitt, Frankfurt am Main,

Suhrkamp, 2003, pp. 10-27. However, the anthropological foundation of recogni-

tive structures is also interpreted historically, so much so that sometimes, in his

later texts, Honneth denies the anthropological foundation in favour of the his-

torical one. See A. Honneth, Unsichtbarkeit. Stationen Einer Theorie der Intersubjektivitt,

Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 2003, pp. 10-27. Compare with his rejection of the

anthropological objection put by Fraser and others, Redistribution Or Recognition?


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A Political-Philosophical Exchange, trans. J. Golb, J. Ingram, and C. Wilke, London/New

York, Verso, 2003, pp. 181-182, and note 82.8 Honneth, The Critique Of Power, chapters 8 and 9. See also Critical Theory, in

The Fragmented World, pp. 86-91.9 Honneth, Work and Instrumental Action, in The Fragmented World, pp. 46-49.

10 The model is presented in all its details in chapter 5 of Struggle For Recognition

and numerous texts thereafter simply refer back to that book.11 This summary of the logic of recognition in the early Jena Hegel is also a good

description of Honneths own understanding of it: Since within the framework

of an ethically established relationship of mutual recognition, subjects are always

learning something more about their particular identity, and since, in each case,

it is a new dimension of their selves that they see confirmed thereby, they must

once again leave, by means of conflict, the stage of ethical life they have reached,

in order to achieve the recognition of more demanding form of their individual-

ity. Honneth, Struggle For Recognition, p. 17. This is confirmed at the end of the

book, with the application to the sociology of social conflicts, p. 162.12 This is probably the most fundamental inspiration behind Honneths thought. He

has never wavered over it.13 Horkheimers famous article Traditional And Critical Theory, in Critical Theory:

Selected Essays, trans. M.J. OConnell et al., New York, Continuum Publication

Corporation, 1982. J. Habermas, Knowledge And Human Interests: A General

Perspective, appendix to Knowledge And Human Interests, trans. J. Shapiro, New

York, Beacon, 1971, pp. 301-317. Honneth has proposed several masterful recon-

structions of the tradition of Critical Theory. See the first three chapters of The

Critique Of Power, the article Critical Theory quoted above, and Pathologien

Des Sozialen. Tradition Und Aktualitt Der Sozialphilosophie, in Das Andere Der

Gerechtigkeit, pp. 47-53.14 Honneth, Die Soziale Dynamik Von Miachtung, p. 96.15 Despite his unmistakable emphasis on the moral grammar of social conflicts,

Honneths model is constantly read as a model of identity politics in an exclu-

sively cultural sense.16 The typical rhetorical gesture is to write Taylor and Honneth, as if the commas,

or brackets, were sufficient to justify this alignment. In fact, the political scope and

dimensions of Honneths ethics of recognition are very different from those of

Taylors liberal interpretation of the model, as this article attempts to show.17 See E. Anghern, ed., Dialektischer Negativismus. Michael Theunissen zum 60. Geburtstag,

Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1992.18 Honneth cites two types of historical and sociological studies: seminal works that

have established a new perspective in class-studies, that of a moral economy


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(E.P. Thompson) underlying social movements, and contemporary research whose

results confirm empirically or in specific areas the fundamental theses presented

in those seminal works. The seminal historical work is E.P. Thompsons The Making

of the English Working Class, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1968. Honneth pre-

sents his own model as a theoretical account of Thompsons notion of moral econ-

omy. Also seminal is Barrington Moores Injustice: The Social Bases Of Obedience

And Revolt, London, Macmillan, 1978. Richard Sennetts The Hidden Injuries Of

Class, New York, Knopf 1972, provides the seminal reference in the sociological

literature. The amount of contemporary historical and sociological work used by

Honneth to substantiate the theory of recognition is tremendous. Any serious cri-

tique of Honneth has to face the task of matching him in the use and knowledge

of historical and sociological literature.19 The article Moral consciousness and Class Domination is the most explicit text

in this respect.20 Not only does the theory of recognition borrow its central concept from real social

movements, but conversely it is confirmed empirically a second time when new

social movements are interpreted from its perspective. See G. Presbey, The Struggle

For Recognition In The Philosophy Of Axel Honneth, Applied To The Current

South African Situation And Its Call For An African Renaissance in Philosophy

and Social Criticism, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 537-561; R. Boelens, Local Rights And Legal

Recognition: The Struggle For Indigenous Water Rights And The Cultural Politics

Of Participation, Paper presented at the Third World Water Forum, 16-23 March

2003, Kyoto, Japan; P. McInness, Rights, Recognition And Community Mobilisation

To Gain Access To Basic Municipal Services In Soweto, conference proceedings

of the 2003 annual conference of the Macquarie University Centre For Research

On Social Inclusion, www.crsi.mq.edu.au/research_sit.html.21 This important implication of the recognition-paradigm for the position of theory

in relationship with its object has been most clearly underlined by Emmanuel

Renault in his article La philosophie critique: porte-parole de la souffrance sociale,

in Mouvements, no. 34, 2002.22 See especially chapter 7 of Struggle For Recognition.23 This is most explicitly affirmed in Domination And Moral Struggle: The Philoso-

phical Heritage Of Marxism Revisited in Honneth, The Fragmented World, pp. 3-14.24 The texts where this dimension of his thought appears most clearly are: Moral

Consciousness and Class Domination, but also the first chapter of his first reply

to Nancy Fraser in Redistribution Or Recognition?25 Honneth, Moral Consciousness and Class Domination, p. 210.26 Honneth, A Fragmented World: On The Implicit Relevance Of Lukcs Early

Work in The Fragmented World, pp. 50-60. It is worth noting that in the German


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edition, the article is in first position and clearly gives the whole book its title,

suggesting that, even more than a retrieval of Marx, Honneths is the attempt to

fulfil the implicit potential in Lukcs.27 This is in fact the driving concern behind Honneths constructs: that theory should

never be severed from the real social experience, from the depth and multi-

dimensionality of social suffering as social.28 Honneth, Critical Theory, see above.29 Ibid., p. 82.30 Honneth, Kommunikative Erschlieung Der Vergangenheit. Zum Zusammenhang

Von Anthropologie Und Geschichtsphilosophie Bei Walter Benjamin in Die Zerrissene

Welt des Sozialen. Sozialphilosophische Aufstze, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1999

(2nd extended edition).31 Honneth, Struggle For Recognition, chapter 7.32 Ibid. See also Unsichtbarkeit, pp. 71-105.33 Honneth, Struggle For Recognition, pp. 157-160. Beyond undeniable differences,

Honneth and Jacques Rancire share a common rejection of social philosophies

that approach the social from above. See J.-P. Deranty, Jacques Rancires

Contribution to the Ethics of Recognition, Political Theory, vol. 31, no. 1, February

2003, pp. 136-156.34 Unsichtbarkeit, p. 14. R. Ellison, Invisible Man, London, Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1953.35 Ibid.36 Hegel and the Human Spirit. A translation of the Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit

(1805-6) with commentary by Leo Rauch, Detroit, Wayne State University Press,

1983, p. 130.37 See Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 127.38 Decentered Autonomy: The Subject After The Fall, in The Fragmented World,

p. 271.39 E. Renault, Mpris Social. Ethique Et Politique De La Reconnaissance, Bgles, Editions

du Passant, 2000; Politique De Lidentit. Politique Dans Lidentit in Lignes 6,

2001; Entre Libralisme Et Communautarisme: Une Troisime Voie? in eds.,

E. Renault and Y. Sintomer, Yves, O en est la thorie critique? Paris, La dcouverte,

2003, pp. 251-268; Exprience De Linjustice. Reconnaissance et Clinique De Linjustice,

Paris, La dcouverte, 2004.40 Renault, Lexprience de linjustice, Chapter 3: The institutions of injustice.41 A. Honneth, Leiden an Unbestimmtheit, Stuttgart, Reclam, 2001.42 In Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 254-256. Honneth himself

suggests this, but the passing suggestion is not further developed. His latest book

confirms that he does not want his theory to take this path.43 Honneth, The Fragmented World, p. 59.


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44 Honneth, Struggle For Recognition, p. 162. The point is repeated p. 164.45 This shift from an Hegelian alternative in the texts around Struggle For Recognition,

towards a more orthodox liberal position is explicitly made in Redistribution or

Recognition? See pp. 177-179. In Unsichtbarkeit, the Hegelian inspiration seems to

be reneged upon (see the Preface, p. 7), and the important first text of the book,

the eponymous Unsichtbarkeit, strikingly interprets recognition in Kantian terms.46 See especially the collection of essays Disintegration. Bruchstcke einer soziologi-

schen Zeitdiagnose, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer, 1995. See also, Organisierte

Selbstverwirklichung. Paradoxien der Individualisierung, in ed. Axel Honneth,

Befreiung aus der Mndigkeit. Paradoxien des gegen wrtigen Kapitalismus, Frankfurt

am Main, Campus, 2002, pp. 141-158.47 Again, the later Redistribution or Recognition texts are strikingly less critical of

modernity than the earlier texts. See for instance, pp. 182-183.48 This ideal account of modernity is needed, according to Honneth, in order to

anchor and thus justify the normative claims found in recognition. See Struggle

for Recognition, chapter 9.


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